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Technology Stocks : Cymer (CYMI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Gallaspy who wrote (21178)	2/24/1999 5:56:00 AM
From: Curlton Latts	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25960

TSMC is also setting its sights on even deeper submicron technology. The company is sampling chips made on 0.18-micron lines this year and will migrate to 0.15 micron next year. TSMC expects to roll out 0.13-micron lines with full copper interconnect capability by the first half of 2001. TSMC's capacity outlook ties in with a renewed sense of confidence in the overall semiconductor market, said BancBoston analyst Susan H. Billat. “There is an industry turnaround. Things are getting better and better, and they are getting better faster than was previously expected” she said, adding that a number of company executives mentioned during the technology conference that they are considering asking their boards to increase capital spending levels to meet the projected demand. “We're running out of capacity,” Billat said. “In the last year, the strategy was to use existing fabs, and use investments to shrink dies. Now companies are going to be making "capacity buys," or investing in capacity expansion. eet.com

To: Alan Gallaspy who wrote (21178)	2/24/1999 2:56:00 PM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25960

Alan, let me tell you a small anecdote. During 1970, I came up with a crazy idea of semiconductor devices in which the active I?V characteristic was not controlled by the concentration of minority charge carriers (as in Si type devices) but by controlling the mobility of majority charge carriers. The idea was, of course, one would not have to be too religious about impurities and such trivial things. I was at Battelle at the time, and everyone thought it was a great idea and Battele even filled a patent (3,686,096). Little did I know. So, the marketing types contacted the big semi houses of the day (Fairchilds, GE, Rayteon) and came back with the sorrow story, guys, they already have few billions invested in the Si technology, impurities are no problem, come back with lower cost packaging and we will talk to you. Well, today, there is probably a trillion bucks invested in the technology and unless plastics comes up with something that performs twice as good at half the price, and that, with minimal investment, it will never garner the investment required to get down the learning curve that Si has gone through. Some 15 years ago, the "battle cry" was that GaAs will replace a big chunk of silicon chips because its electronic properties are so great, but the GaAs people, those that survived, are still fighting a daily battle of "there is no problem so great you cannot run away from", meaning, while they are excellent at very high frequencies, they continuously need to go to higher frequencies since good old Si keeps pushing their boundaries of performance. GaAs was and still is a minuscule amount of total semiconductors shipped, 15 years after being proclaimed the "material of the future". Last, CYMI does not really care if you "etch" those submicron features in Si, GaAs, polymers or superconductors, they still will be selling you the right "light bulbs" to do it with. Zeev